The Holy Woman and Her Loving Hugs
Münchner Merkur
October 2001
Already at the parking lot you get a sense of India. You smell Patchouli,
and the scent of curry is tickling your nose. Entering the hall,
you retain the impression of having changed continents. If you watch
the scene from the gallery you see people sitting on the carpeted
floor of the sports hall. There are hundreds of these people, and
in the middle of them all sits Amma like the queen bee in her hive.
She is called Mata Amritanandamayi, or, for short, Amma or Mother.
Tirelessly, the tiny woman, dressed in white, is holding one person
after another to her chest whispering something comforting into
each one's ears. She is always smiling. On the subcontinent, where
she is not only the spiritual leader of a monastery but also the
founder of numerous charitable projects, she embraces up to 15,000
people a day. Every day.
Hardly anybody is capable of putting into words what is happening
to them when being hugged by Amma. Two girls just got embraced;
one of them is incapable of speaking and the other one, her face
red, is moved to tears. A family from Wasserburg brought their Yorkshire
terrier to the Divine Mother; they are still dazzled. The woman
has an other-worldly smile on her face, and her husband and her
son seem to be coming back to this world gradually. Only the dog
seems unimpressed.
Paul Sharma is able to express it more clearly. He possesses a
factory with 600 employees and retired from business to be able
to cook for mother. In the improvised kitchen in a tent, over thousand
Indian meals are cooked daily. Sharma says that he is very happy
to serve Amma and that's just the way he looks. Just like Amma he
also has that smile on his face which he seems to remove only when
sleeping.
With the help of a translating monk, the woman that grew up in
a family of fishermen answers the question: What is she trying to
give with her embraces? She says that she wants to transmit part
of her Love to the people and thus help them to become independent.
And that is exactly what the tiny, honored lady does. Not with words,
but through her acts.
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